Executive Director Kimberly Aceves- Iñiguez has been passionately committed for over 20 years to social justice organizing and advocacy efforts that bring voice and power to youth, LGBTQ people, people of color, and working-class communities in the Bay Area. Before coming on as the Executive Director for RYSE, Kimberly served as the Executive Director for Youth Together, the founding organization of the RYSE Center.
Kanwarpal Dhaliwal is one of the co-founders of RYSE and currently acts as the Associate Director. She supports and guides the implementation and integration of healing-centered practices, grounded in racial justice and liberation, and also develops, promotes, and advocates for policies, investments, practices, and research that enliven healing, justice, and liberation. Kanwarpal believes that the purpose of her work and life is to contribute to movements, communities, and legacies of liberation that honor the ancestors who fought for her existence and survival, and to forge a world that is just and gentle for future generations.
“It is about moving in partnership, nurturing practices of culture and identity for healing ourselves, healing communities, and healing systems.”
“When young people first began dreaming and envisioning a transformative space in Richmond back in 2002, they were clear that music, arts, culture, justice, and healing had to be core to the work. These young luminaries envisioned a world where both their creativity and their heart had a safe place to reimagine and dream all that we are manifesting today.”
- Lana Tilley, Development Director of RYSE Center
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RYSE Center is based in Richmond, California. The cultural center was launched in 2008, in the rise of violence in Richmond. The city bears the burden of multiple systemic inequities and faces persistent dehumanization, stigma, and criminalization by schools, police, media, community and public systems. These inequities result in disproportionately high rates of homicide, gun violence, high school drop-out and punitive discipline, poverty and unemployment, and mental health crises. RYSE is working to tend, treat, and heal the institutional injuries that put young people in these communities at risk of direct and acute injury.
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